Tampa, Fla. -- If you need any evidence that social media is transforming the political discourse in 2012, consider this: More tweets were sent during the first two days Republicans gathered in Tampa this week than in the entire 2008 election campaign.

A decade ago, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest didn't even exist. Now campaigns hire teams of experts to harness the power of social media to connect with supporters, drive their message, tap into like-minded communities and mobilize turnout.

"The 24-hour news cycle has become a 140-character one," notes Adam Sharp, Twitter's senior manager for government, news and social innovation.

California GOP strategist Jonathan Wilcox, a veteran in helping candidates get out their message, said the 2012 Republican convention represents a watershed in the variety and depth of social media content.

"The first thing that campaigns and elected officials did with social media was ignore it," he said. "Then they tried to co-opt it, and that failed. And then they did the crash course."

Four years ago, Barack Obama's massive social media advantage over Republican John McCain helped him build support among young voters and maximize turnout across the nation.

This year, while Obama holds a wide lead over Republican rival Mitt Romney in metrics such as number of followers and number of tweets, Team Romney insists that Republicans have a higher quality operation that will pay off on election day.

"It really doesn't matter how many people you have following you," said Zac Moffatt, digital director of the Romney campaign. "It's how many people you engage."

Moffatt cited, as an example, the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court's "Obamacare" decision in June. He said Romney generated "likes" to his Facebook post on the ruling from about a quarter of his nearly 2.1 million fans, while Obama totaled about 460,000 "likes" from his 27 million fans, a rate of less than 2 percent.

A recent study by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that the president's campaign used social media to post "nearly four times as much content as the Romney campaign and was active on nearly twice as many platforms."

Obama sent 25 times as many tweets as Romney, had twice as many Facebook "likes" and YouTube interactions and was retweeted 150,106 times versus 8,601 for Romney.

Katie Harbath, Facebook's chief liaison with political campaigns, says Romney's digital team deserves credit for its high level of engagement with its core audience.

"You've got to have good content that's compelling," she said. "The Romney campaign does a great job with this."

Larry Sabato, a veteran campaign-watcher at the University of Virginia, warned political professionals to keep the political role of social media in perspective.

"Social media is a communications tool, no more, no less," he said. "The message matters far more, though. A winning message trumps a winning social media strategy."